THERMOSET RESINS AND PERFORMANCE Novel Environmentally Friendly Bio-Based Thermoset Resins and Performance

Among thermosetting materials unsaturated polyesters and vinyl esters are the most common resins used in the market for a large variety of applications due to their practical and economic advantages, however, most thermosetting resins are derived from petroleum sources. With the increasing desire to move toward more environmentally friendly and sustainable "green" feedstocks, use of biologically derived feedstocks to develop bio-based thermoset resins has attracted increasing attention. Distilled tall oils (DTO), mainly composed of tall oil fatty acids and rosin acids, are bio-refinery products obtained as co-product in Kraft wood pulping. In this work, a series of new bio-based DTO vinyl ester resins were developed. These resins were cured through free radical mechanism and their performance was evaluated including cure properties (gel time, cure time, exothermic peak temperature at room and elevated temperatures), physical and thermal properties (tensile strength, tensile modulus, tensile elongation, T-g from dynamic mechanical analysis), polymerization shrinkage, and surface tackiness, etc. The study showed that well balanced properties could be achieved from these DTO-derived vinyl ester resins.